Ashes to Ashes, Fun to Funky
by SteveAtwater
Summary: Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do.


Sometimes she hates this planet.

It's not always. It's not even frequent, really. She doesn't spend all her time yearning for Galaluna, its seas and skies and cities and most of all its people, its wonderful wonderful people who understood the meaning of heart, who weren't all cynical and angsty and hard...

And she has friends. Well, some friends. People besides Lance, who like her. Kind of. And maybe they aren't the most popular people around, but popularity is overrated. Kimmy's popular, but she was...not very nice before she started dating Octus. She's still not very nice, sometimes, although she's nicer a bit more now.

And most of the time Ilana is fine with Earth. It's her home now. And these people are now her people.

But sometimes, she wants _her_ people instead.

* * *

One day in gym class, she suddenly needs to be home.

It hits her like a bullet to the heart, slamming into her full force and knocking her down, and it takes a few seconds for her to figure out what happened. It's a few seconds too many, and she's starting to attract attention–not the good kind of attention, the bad kind, the kind she got all the time when she and Lance and Octus–the only family she has left as far as she knows–oh, there it goes again, another stab of pain–

She pulls herself to her feet before anyone can help her up, before she can regain that reputation of being the really weird kid–she's still the weird kid but she's gone from weird to quirky and she doesn't want to go back–although she was _never_ the weird kid back on Galaluna, why can't she go back there–smiling and waving off anybody concerned about her. She just fell, that's all.

She doesn't say anything about being an alien who doesn't quite fit in with Sherman, Illinois.

* * *

One night she wakes up at 4 A.M. and wanders down to the kitchen to make some hot chocolate. She could try going back to sleep, but the way she feels right now she knows it'll take her an hour to fall asleep again, and she'll have to get up at 6 anyway so she can get ready for school. It's just not worth it.

She doesn't wake anybody up, although she's certain that Octus knows what she's doing. He doesn't sleep, not really, he doesn't have to.

Ilana doesn't know what he does at night, actually. For all she knows, he does sleep. But she's sure that even if he does his systems are still alert to make sure everything's all right and the Mutraddi haven't found them. So yes, Octus knows what she's doing, in some subroutine somewhere at least.

She takes her drink up to her room and steps out on the balcony where the cold fall wind makes her shiver and sip her hot chocolate. She's rewarded with burnt taste buds and doesn't take another sip for several minutes. A skin has formed on the drink, and she winces.

_This sort of thing never happened with khaleeftulate._

The thought of home saddens her, and after staring at the drink for a few seconds Ilana pours it out on the lawn and heads back inside, where she lies in bed and doesn't sleep.

* * *

Ilana doesn't know if Lance feels the same way.

She thinks he must. After all, how could he not miss Galaluna? It's their home, and their people, and...

And he was so much more insignificant there. She was the princess, and he was just a foot soldier with a father who...disappeared? She knows that he was officially declared dead, but there was no body, and when there's no body...

Ilana doesn't want to follow this train of thought, so she doesn't. But she still wonders if Lance misses Galaluna as much as she does.

She doesn't ask him, though. Just in case she doesn't like his answer.

* * *

Galaluna exists mainly in her dreams these days.

It's odd for her when she realizes it, but it's true: Galaluna has faded into memories for the most part. Occasionally she remembers it, or sees something that reminds her of Galaluna, but most of the time when she sees something on Earth she relates it to Earth instead of her planet. And a lot of the things on Earth have become normal to her eyes.

She worries that Galaluna will become completely alien to her, that she'll never be able to really go back.

She also worries that going back will never be an option.

* * *

Everything falls apart with Octus's...deactivation.

She doesn't want to call it his death because death seems too final, and besides, Octus isn't dead, he's just nonfunctional. Eventually they'll get him back online. At least, she hopes so. But until then, they have to leave home and turn into...she's not sure what it would be called on this planet, although she knows Octus would know the name for it, and he'd tell them and probably get them to look the part and it would be _so much better_ if Octus was around...

For a brief moment, she wonders when Octus became so important to her before casting the thought aside as unimportant, because he means a lot to her, and _that's_ what matters, not when she started needing him as more than just a machine or a caretaker or their source of knowledge about this planet, the same way that Lance went from being a bodyguard to, well, her brother, kind of.

She's an only child so she's not sure, but she suspects that the fake identities they left behind started to become real in a sense: her and Lance, sister and brother, with Octus/Newton as their father, and caretaker...

And friend.

* * *

They move from town to town, from bus to bus, from railroad car to railroad car, stopping at cheap motels for a day at a time and eating convenience store sandwiches which Ilana grows to hate with their too-dry bread and too-salty meat and tasteless cheese and slightly rotten lettuce...

But she has to make sure Lance eats, and she doesn't want to risk venturing too far from the motels they stay at just in case she gets lost or Lance blows something up or Octus comes back and she misses it so she swallows her disgust along with her pride and makes sure that Lance eats and hopes, hopes, hopes that tonight will be the night all three of them are reunited again.

And night after night, she's disappointed.

Sometimes she hates this planet.


End file.
